Wings 3D/User Manual/User Interface/Context Sensitive Menus

Context Sensitive Menus

One of the great advantages of using Wings is its Context Sensitive Menus. With all the modeling tools specific to the current Selection mode just a mouse click away Wings has both a powerful and efficient work flow . Right-clicking anywhere in the Geometry Window will bring up a menu with all the tools and commands available for the current selection. Often this menu is referred to as the Right-Click Menu. There are six different selection modes and each has its own unique Right-Click Menu: No Current Selection, Vertex, Edge, Face, Object/Body and Lights. Right-clicking with any element of geometry selected will bring up the appropriate menu for the mode you are in. If nothing is selected right- clicking brings up the No Selection also referred to as the Primitives menu.

Selection Modes

In Wings3D the menu functions displayed are only those available to the current selection mode employed.
After all, why display greyed out menu items that are unavailable to the user?
Also note that a lot of operations with the same names should perform a similar operation in their respective modes. It is possible for the behavior of a given operation to vary (sometimes substantially) depending on what mode it occurs in.

Eg Using Face | Rotate will cause all selected, isolated faces to rotate about their own individual (local) axis, but converting the same selection to Vert mode will result in all selected verts rotating around a single common axis.

Create mode items (no current selection)

Selecting any of these creates a basic primitive in the geometry window:

• Tetrahedron
• Octahedron
• Octotoad
• Dodecahedron
• Icosahedron
• Cube
• Cylinder
• Cone
• Sphere
• Torus

• Grid
• Text
• More
  • Torus Knot
  • Spiral
  • Spring
  • UV Torus
  • Lumpy Torus
  • Spiral Torus

 

Selecting any of these items creates a lighting reference which may be used for rendering:

• Light
  • Infinite
  • Point
  • Spot
  • Ambient
  • Area

Selecting Material allows you to edit or create a new material.
Selecting image allows you to import an image for later use within wings.

Vertex Mode Items (vertex selected)

Operations used to manipulate vertices:

• Move
• Rotate
• Scale uniform
• Scale radial
• Extrude
• Flatten
• Intersect
• Connect

• Tighten
• Bevel
• Dissolve
• Collapse
• Deform
• Vertex color
• Bend
• Bend Clamped
• Shift

Edge mode items (edges selected)

Operations used to manipulate and modify edges:

• Move
• Rotate
• Scale uniform
• Scale axis
• Scale radial
• Slide
• Extrude
• Cut

• Connect
• Bevel
• Dissolve
• Collapse
• Hardness
• Loop cut
• Vertex color
• Intersect

Face mode items (faces selected)

Operations used to manipulate and modify faces:

• Move
• Rotate
• Scale uniform
• Scale axis
• Scale radial
• Extrude
• Extrude region
• Extract region
• Flatten

• Inset
• Intrude
• Bevel
• Bridge
• Bump
• Lift
• Put on
• Mirror
• Dissolve

• Collapse
• Smooth
• Tesselate
• Hide
• Material
• Vertex Color
• UV Mapping

 
 

Object mode items (Object selected as whole)

Operations used to alter objects (other 3D applications may refer to this as body mode):

• Move
• Rotate
• Scale uniform
• Scale axis
• Scale radial
• Flip
• Invert
• Tighten
• Smooth
• DS Subdivision *
• Combine
• Separate

• Weld
• Cleanup
• Auto-smooth
• Duplicate
• Delete
• Rename
• Show All
• Vertex Color Mode
• Object to area light
• Materials to colors
• Vertex Color
• UV Mapping

--07:22, 4 January 2006 (UTC) pauljs75